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After reading some of the outraged viewer comments I decided to write give my 1 cent. I am a 31 year old b-horror movie obsessed freak that still lives with his parents- so maybe that explains my taste in absolute trash. Over the years I have obtained a collection of dvds, videos, and laserdiscs that puts most video stores to shame (of course that is not saying much these days with Blockbuster and Hollywood video stores horrible horror section). Since I couldn't rent this at the time I bought this, I purchased this after seeing some clips of children being shot in really unrealistic fashion I couldn't resist.

The key is this- very campy. All you "Grudge-Ring-I know What You Did Last Summer with Van Helsing" fans will probably not "get it". What is there to get, you may ask? It's just funny, funny that a movie was put together professionally, shot on 35 mm film, that has scenes where children get shot on screen and they actually use squibs (some of you know what squibs are). Yes, you can see the kids breathing, strings connected arrows, and blood tubes, etc. But that's why I bought it.

So, the film as a whole is not that entertaining, but the death sequences are worth it for you fans of the bottom of the barrel films. Have fun. I'm going to go back to my room before my mom asks me to take the trash out.

This movie is a total bait and switch. I went into it having some positive expectations, namely, that I'd see a lot of grade school kids murdering their parents in a series of bloodsoaked rituals. However, this kind of stuff never really happens and it isn't until the FINAL 90-SECONDS that the director pulls out the stops, providing us with a hilariously bad "massacre" scene that had my brother and I rolling. The rest of this movie, however, is entirely forgettable and I can't recommend it. That final 90-seconds is awesome, yes, but you have to sit through a lot of boring crap and listen to a lot of bad writing to get there. If you just have to see the funny clip at the end where the kids all get killed, I'd search the web versus wasting a rental slot. Trust me, this movie sucks. A lot. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

Mike Cribben's cult favourite Beware: Children at Play is one of the most demented films ever to be picked up by Troma. The film deserves praise for fearlessly breaking one of the last taboos in horror and most impressively, doing so in an entertaining manner. Beware: Children at Play really is a taste free zone. For that achievement alone, the film is an absolute must see.

Lloyd Kaufman's introduction to the film begins with an anecdote recounting how a preview for Beware: Children at Play successfully emptied a theatre at the Cannes film festival. I'm sure the reaction would have been one of rapturous applause if the audience had seen the film in its entirety, because within the context of the "plot", the slaughtering of the demon children really does provide great entertainment. I know that sounds abominable but when a film's plot revolves around wild cannibalistic children who believe they are characters from Beowulf, I would say that just about anything goes.

The film begins slowly and somewhat painfully due to the extended dialogues about "cleavages" (I didn't even know there was a plural form of the word) and supernatural phenomenon. Before too long, John has joined Ross in his search for a group of missing children. These children really need a visit from Super Nanny because they spend their time cutting people in half with sickles and impaling trespassers on wooden stakes. The fact that children are depicted eating body organs would be tasteless enough for most directors, but to Cribben's credit he raises the bar by throwing a rape scene and a handful of religious fanatics into the mix. The film momentarily goes astray while our incredibly stupid heroes go to the library and read Beowulf, in order to get into the mind of the ringleader, who believes he is the cannibalistic monster, Grendel.

Thankfully, Beware: Children at Play gets back on track for the infamous child killing marathon. This sequence is remarkable in its complete and utter shamelessness. Kiddies get decapitated, stabbed, shot and killed with pitchforks. It is all so very wrong but when presented in this context, with the campy production values and incredibly unrealistic effects, the scene comes across as a stroke of genius. However, I think the picture gallery of slaughtered children on the Troma DVD is a bit foul even by my degenerate standards. That said, I'm glad that Troma once again has the balls to put this kind of material out on the market.

Beware: Children at Play is definitely not for everyone. However, fans of Troma and tastelessness in general will have a grand old time watching this shocker. I give this film full marks for having the backbone to completely smash one of cinema's biggest taboos and for being entertaining while doing so.

So poorly acted it's comical. What's worse is it wasn't intentional. For a tip on how to chew scenery watch the female reporter's performance

Now, I understand this movie is made for fans of Trama Studio's work and is a cult classic. But this movie is horrible. Cult classic or not, there is no reason you should enjoy a movie made on a budget that's less than many people make in a year. The special effects are the worst ever, there are constant mess-ups and errors, the sound is atrocious, and the video quality is horrible, even for a movie that's over a decade and a half old. The plot is just...unbearable. For unexplained reasons an innocent kid kills his father in the very beginning and eats him. Now, this might be more understandable if the kid was in a satanic cult or they were on Indian Burial Grounds or some other nonsense Trama might use to explain the storyline better, but there isn't. There is no reason at all.

It's been mentioned that many people might take offense at this movie, I didn't. I think it's horrible for other reasons. But there is children being slaughtered, extreme violence and gore, murder, nudity, and even rape. There is no reason or explanation for much of this. This is in my opinion, the worst movie ever and I think the one that we are forced to give it is overly generous. Avoid this movie as well as Trama's other work as much as possible.

Young Glenn Randle (Eric Tonken) and his father (Bernard Hocke), a college professor of medieval and Anglo Saxon English, go on a camping trip into the wilds, where they fish, sing songs based on the Old English poem Beowulf, and play hide and seek (sounds like fun, huh?). It is during one of these games that Professor Randall steps on a bear trap, breaking his leg; unable to move, he lies there for three days, his son by his side, gradually going delirious as the wound becomes infected. Then he carks it. Affected by his dad's final feverish talk of 'gulping blood' and 'gobbling flesh', Glenn slices open his pop's belly and feasts on his entrails.

Ten years later, writer John DeWolfe (Michael Robertson) and his family—hypercritical wife Julia (Lori Romero) and daughter Kara (Jamie Krause)—travel to the same area to visit John's Vietnam buddy Ross Carr (Rich Hamilton), a local sheriff whose daughter Amy is just one of several children to have gone missing over the past few years. No prizes for guessing that crazy cannibal Glenn is responsible, having abducted and brainwashed the kids into believing that he is the mythical monster Grendell from Beowulf, and that they are flesh-eating demons.

Cannibalistic kids sure sound like a whole lot of demented fun, but despite the occasional smattering of bargain basement gore (including a cheezy bodily bisection by scythe, a slashed throat, an impalement on spiked stakes, and a mutilated corpse with a rat on its face), plus a couple of rather twisted sexual moments (Glenn/Grendell's rape of a woman while the killer kids watch on, and jail-bait Amy offering herself to John), Beware: Children at Play is mostly dull talk and uneventful wandering around the woods. The direction is uninspired and the acting is largely wooden, with my 'worst performance' award going to Stephanie Jaworski as irritating psychic Alice Allegari, who calls everyone 'deary' and deservedly has her guts eaten.

Still, this is one of those films where you might just want to hang on in there for the final few minutes (or get busy with the scene advance button), because the film almost redeems itself in the closing moments with a memorable spot of truly outrageous carnage, as the crazed kids are brutally massacred by the locals. Violence against kids is a touchy subject, even in horror films, but director Mik Cribben clearly doesn't care, with one terrible tyke getting a pitchfork through the neck, another having their entire head blown off by a shotgun, and another being forced to take a gun barrel in the mouth, with inevitable splattery results. OK, so all the 'dead' kids can clearly be seen still breathing as the camera surveys the carnage, but at least the film tries to push the boundaries of taste, and for that I'll generously give it a rating of 3/10.

I went in expecting low budget thrills and they came, but they just came late in the movie. It was decent for the first three fourths of the movie,but it moved slowly. Once it hit the last quarter of the movie it picked up tremendously. I love the last quarter of the movie. If the whole movie had been like that part I could have given it a much higher score. Still I am proud to have added this Troma classic to my collection. (5 out of 10)

It's from Troma, and it meets expectations. The movie has a lot of awful. Awful production values. Awful acting and dialogue. Awful make up on those supposed to be older. And padded scenes to stretch out the time. But it also has one of the nuttiest endings one could ever want. It starts with a father and son camping, and the father get caught by a bear trap on his foot. They wait for someone to come along. Three days pass, no one comes and the boy gets hungry. Very hungry after eating all for camping food. Ten years pass, and new characters come onto the scene. Turns out 12 children have disappeared, two months apart, and then a thirteenth. It is set in the NJ pine barrens, but seems heavy on red neck people. The ending is simply pure insanity. But a movie with cannibal kids does not come along very often. Truly unique.

First off, I have to admit that the story to Beware: Children at Play isn't bad. I mean, some of the plot points are unique, and it's at least nice not to see the same assembly-line horror plot that you'd see in a bigger-budget movie. Yet, the low-budget ultimately ruins the movie. Sure, you'd expect the acting to not be up to par, but in this movie, the thespian work is really bad. It's on the level of skin flicks. Also, the special effects, for the most part, are even worse than what you'd find in a B-movie. It's more like what you'd expect from a recent film-school graduate. As other people have mentioned, the movie does have many boring points. The ending, while nice, isn't good enough to warrant a recommendation on my part. So, I can't say that I'll ask people to see this flick.

I have yet to see the big-budget Beowulf movie from a couple years ago. Probably never will. I don't care for big-budget movies, I like 'em old and obscure, and sometimes, downright awful. Despite all that, I got a strong feeling Beowulf is probably a decent watch compared to this one. And whatever vague connection these two movies share, really makes no difference to me, because big-budget cinema ain't my cup of tea, and Beware: Children At Play clearly ain't worth a damn.

Yay, it's a camping movie from the 80's. Father and son, playing, and frolicking amongst nature. Awkward little scenes involving the father quoting Beowulf, and father and son singing "Old McDonald". Father chases son a tad too much, and gets his leg stuck in a bear trap. Son sits by dying fathers side for days, listening to him go insane, and obsessively quoting Beowulf, and eating beans. A lot of talk about cannibalism. Father croaks, brain-washed son ditches beans, and mutilates and eats freshly deceased father. Wait a minute, this isn't a camping movie, this is an extremely low-budget, not-so-well-thought-out, non-Kaufman, Troma movie... from the 80's.

Fast forward 10 years. John Dewolfe, along with his irritating little family is driving out to rural New Jersey to help out his old army buddy (sherriff of Rural, New Jersey) and his irritating little family, who are all stressed because his daughter was kidnapped. Actually, a lot of kids from this irritating little town have turned up missing. Is it foul play, or did they simply take off because they were sick of being bored? Well, whatever the case, sci-fi writer, John Dewolfe, Army-buddy-Sheriff, his pal, Dr. Fish, and some psychic should have enough brain power between them to get to the bottom of this.

After the first few scenes involving father and son time, my expectations were already low enough. I had come to terms with exactly how bad of an experience this was going to be. Which, if my naive assumption had been accurate, this movie wouldn't have been all that bad. Enter John Dewolfe and family, and everything goes to Hell. Beware: Children At Play is just plain boring, and there's no way around it. Not the worst I've ever seen, not even remotely the worst from Troma, but this just gives you no reason to welcome it into your collection.

For far more worthwhile non-Kaufman Troma's, check out Decampitated (an actual camping movie), or Redneck Zombies (masterpiece), or Combat Shock (most depressing comedy ever made). Sure, Beware Children At Play does offer head-ache inducing boredom, an unappealing, cheap, keyboard score, zero intentional or unintentional humor, and, pretty much, nothing else, but if you actually make it through this entire movie, you just might look back on your experience in Rural New, Jersey with fond memories. 3/10

I've seen low-budget horror movies before and they provide that so bad it's funny feel to them and this was no exception. However this was the worst yet! I swear the actors must've been reading off of cue cards because they put absolutely no emotion into it whatsoever, it was like they were all monotones. To get a scary effect in the background a scene would consist of a tree shaking and unfortunately they did this multiple times. I was just so bored with it I wanted to cry. I did laugh at a lot of the death scenes though since they were done so poorly. Oh and the ending is hysterical since there's no reason or justification for it whatsoever. When one kid gets shot at his head just pops, I think they used a balloon as a prop...no kidding! The guns were like Revolutionary War muskets and I got a kick out of that as well. The dialog was retarded and whoever wrote a script this bad should be shunned from the film industry for the rest of their natural born-lives!!! Only watch if you want a good chuckle and for an ending that you won't find anywhere else.

Final Cry:

Movies: If this made it into theaters I was the first President of the U.S.

DVD Purchase: That'd be a no!

Rental: Only in extreme situations!

In comparison with the vast majority of junk Troma Studios released over the years, "Beware: Children at Play" is actually very endurable and – do I daresay it – even occasionally imaginative and entertaining junk! Personally I always had a weakness for films revolving on murderous children, so maybe I was a bit more tolerant and open-minded in this case, but you'll also quickly notice that this film is less awful than the usual outings of Lloyd Kaufman's Studio. The subject matter is as ridiculous, over-the-top and offensive as usual, but at least the finished product feels a lot less amateurish. The plot opens with a young boy standing guard over his daddy as he's lying trapped in a bear claw and slowly dying in agony. When he eventually passes away, the bewildered boy rips open his stomach and eats the organs with a devilish smile on his face. Cut to ten years later, with a family of three arriving in the same forestry area and learning that 12 children already went missing and their number increases every two months. Then the children show themselves again, but the parents won't have the chance to embrace them anymore as they've formed an eerie cult of savage and flesh-eating monsters with as their sole mission to annihilate all adults. The concept admittedly sounds totally crazy, but I can't emphasize enough that this is a superior Troma script, even dragging in poetic sub plots and literature references. There also still is loads of splatter and repulsive make-up art to behold, so even the die-hard fans of the lousy Troma stuff won't have to feel entirely disappointed (though it's hard to imagine there are people who feel disappointed upon seeing a film that is actually better than initially anticipated). The acting performances of the whole cast – the children included – are not very good, but definitely Oscar-worthy compared to … well … usual Troma standards. Heck, there even are some admirable attempts to build up suspense and a sinister atmosphere at times, so I feel almost tempted to label "Beware: Children at Play" as a good film! Granted, you'd have to be quite sick in the head to enjoy a story like this – and particularly to sit through the outrageously demented climax – but that's just an extra recommendation to all you raving bloodthirsty movie-maniacs. You know who you are!

Author John DeWolfe (Michael Robertson) heads with his wife and young daughter to a puritanical town (in Jersey?) to visit relative Sheriff Ross Carr and his family. The town has been struck by a series of abductions of children, one every two months with the Sheriff's daughter among them. Seems a child abandoned in the woods a decade ago has been recruiting kids to his cult that worships the epic poem Beowulf (really). This is like CHILDREN OF THE CORN but set in the wilds of New Jersey and minus the corn. Director Mik Cribben (who has a large supporting role) stages moments and dialog that come of more as a comedy, like the town lynching party that just stands around for hours. Sadly, he was trying to be serious. He does get credit for throwing around some blood and the all-out kid massacre during the film's final scene. Nothing much else there really. Picked up and released by Troma.

This was a great movie. It's underated by a lot of people. I believe that mostly every movie by TROMA is great. My all time favorite is "Mother's Day" it's the best horror film ever! The beginning of this film deals with a man and his son on a camping trip. The man is playing a game of "Hide and Seek" with the kid. And the man falls into a bear trap and dies after about 3 days. His last wish is that the kid does not starve so he tells is son Glenn to, well, eat him! And then the kid turns into an awful killing machine. Eating adults everywhre. And then we meet a man taking his family to visit an old army buddy who lives in the town where the children are being abducted (Tromaville as said on the box.) His daughter was abducted and Glenn made her his queen, you could say. But I'll let you see it yourself. Let me tell you the end of this film (as in Mother's Day) is a horror classic not to be missed by anyone. There is a warning on the front of the box that says it should not be watched by Preagnant women or people with Heart Conditions. It's all a hoax the film isn't that scary. But it shows what I like to call 80's nostalgia. It was the end of the Slasher films. Possibly this movie could be called "The Last Great Horror Film." I suggest that you go rent it first, and if you like it, it is available at Suncoast in the $9.99 section of the horror films. This is not the greatest horror film ever but it was made by the creator of the best horror film ever who is Charles Kaufman, creator of Mother's Day. His brother Lloyd Kaufman as well as Michael Herz produce this. It's a great film and I give it a 9 1/2 out of 10. Highly Recommended!

Basically, to keep this short, this movies very boring. Its decent for fans of the genre to check out. The only reason to check out this film is for the death scenes and the wonderful ending, besides that, the movie will just make you fall asleep if you dont fastfoward it.

Children in your local playground doing make-believe roll-playing are more convincing than the kids and even most of the adults here. Poorly written, laughably directed, amateurishy blocked with an end massacre that is unintentionally hilarious in how perfunctorily it is presented. The leader of the stolen kids has scenes of violence and sex that are embarrassing. Many of the freshly killed seem to forget to stop breathing. The sheer inauthenticity of thedialogue is disconcerting. Almost every line spoken is exposition. Backwoods types sound like they are from Brooklyn. There is no dramatic impact. Children disappear and nothing much is done to find them. The same kids come back looking for pies or people to eat and no one seems to be relieved or scared or whatever a real reaction might be.

If you can tolerate watching the whole mess, you will regret wasting 90 minutes of your life on this.